Well, it didn't take me three weeks to get rid of the cold that I brought back from Cornwall but I have been fairly busy, mostly with finishing off some old projects and thinking about new ones.
First of all a few photos connected with Mousehole.
I was lucky enough to receive one of Carolyn's beautiful hearts all in its Christmas colours and with its own version of the Mousehole Harbour lights.
Carolyn inspired me to experiment with a low angle shot in the Rock Pool Cafe at Mousehole.
And more experimenting with close ups of surfaces of ornaments in the apartment.
I did have several sessions of printing with the Gelli plate (all of 5"x3")
I was really happy with this one. The circles were made with an Acrylic Marker pen. No, I hadn't heard of them either but having tried them out I love them! You can even draw on the Gelli plate with them and then lift it off. Hmmmm. I've just thought. You must be thinking, what is the point of that? You may as well just draw on the print. Ermm, yes, I think you're probably right. Doh! Anyway, it was fun playing. The best bit was using feathers I had found on the seashore as resists on the plate and then printing onto a background from the feather. The marks are beautiful.
The prints were all made using deli-paper which came with the plate (I ordered my baby plate from Hilary Beattie). It is a very lightweight paper and takes the paint beautifully from the plate. I used some home made stamps, corks, bubble wrap, feathers, some wierd plasticy stuff that made wonderful organic marks, freezer paper resists and generally anything I could find to make interesting marks on the plate. I cut out some little fish shapes from the freezer paper and had fun with both the positive and negative (resist) prints from them. You can just see a fish's tail in the detail shot above.
So, since we've been home I've made a mug tote, to carry my mug to and from our Sit & Stitch day.
The pattern was really easy and it made up in a flash. (Sorry, the link isn't working well. Maybe it's a temporary hiccup)
A long time ago I took part in Kate North's 'Another Little Quilt Swap' and received a quilt made by my pal Tina. The quilt was A4 size and I love it but it has languished in a drawer (sorry Tina) so I thought it was time I did something with it.
I've turned it into a cover for my sketchbook. I had to improvise to get it to fit the book and combined it with a sample from a Hilary Beattie workshop that had also languished. At least now I can enjoy the artwork every time I use my sketchbook and I can move it on to every new sketchbook too.
The images aren't the best as I used flash, sorry about that.
Finally, yesterday I spent nearly 3 hours sorting out one of my boxes of scraps. Boy! Who knew it could take so long? A friend is going to inherit the useable small pieces and the larger pieces have gone back into the box for making some scrap quilts.
I've still got another box to go and then I need to start on the whole room! Or maybe not! :-)
We decided to do something a little different this year and spend New Year down in Cornwall. Instead of going to St Ives we chose Mousehole (pronounced Mowzal) where they make Christmas and New Year a bit special by putting up illuminations. The Mousehole Harbour Lights are run by a group of volunteers and draw thousands of people to the small fishing village every year.
We stayed in a fabulous apartment in a house right at the top of the village with views right across the village and out to sea.
Looking down on the harbour at sunrise.
The lounge was very comfortable and had lots of quirky art pieces all around.
The apartment is in the house above all the others, on the left.
Looking out to Mounts Bay.
The dining table at the double-aspect window was a great place to play.
I sat here every morning to watch the sun come up too.
Not quite as sunny on New Year's Day but still lovely.
We were treated to a couple of beautiful sunsets too.
The view across the village at night was beautiful too.
We had a wander round the harbour at dusk to photograph the lights and reflections.
Not to be outdone, Mousehole staged its own firework display at midnight on New Year's Eve and my DH took miilions of images which I'll spare you. Here are just two.
At the risk of making this post a mammoth one we did venture out of Mousehole courtesy of the very lovely and special Carolyn who took us to Morvah, which was shut so we talked to the cows and they slobbered everywhere.
We were also treated to a short visit to St Ives but alas no beachcombing this time.
Approaching the town through the grounds of the Treloyhan Manor Hotel.
The sandbank is still there in the mouth of the harbour. It was interesting to see the muted colours in the clothing of the people on the beach, very different from the summer colourscape.
I'll be back with part two, not so long as part one, soon. I need to go to bed and nurse the cold the old year left me with :-)
Following so closely on the heels of my Susan Denton workshop you will think I am always doing workshops. This weekend I have had a tiring but fabulous time at a workshop with Angie Hughes organised by Nichola Keeble who runs the new(ish) company Stitch Retreats. The Retreat was held at Stoke Rochford Hall which used to be my old stomping ground 40 years ago when it was a teacher training college.
Hard to believe this beautiful building had been almost destroyed by fire about 10 years ago.
This beautiful Christmas tree in what used to be called the Crush Hall smelt beautiful.
We were so lucky with the weather all weekend and this was the distracting view from our seminar room.
Stoke Rochford sits in a beautiful parkland adjacent to a golf course and it was this rural location that attracted me when I was looking for a college in the 70's.
A lunchtime walk in the gardens revealed sculptural teasels and beautiful leaf shapes.
This fascinating glass fireplace dates to the early 20th century and must be beautiful with firelight flickering through the glass plates.
There were two classes running at the Retreat, our group with Angie Hughes and a second group with Mandy Pattullo. Our group was 7 strong including Angie so we were very select, compact and bijou as they say. It was lovely to have plenty of room to work and also to have lots of support from Angie who is a very relaxed and generous tutor.
Our workshop centred on exploring velvet and that proved to be in an exciting and interesting way. We worked with light coloured velvet and applied dyes, ink, bleach and stamps to it to gradually build up a base on which to work.
I explored several techniques that I havn't worked with much before and it was fascinating to see how different everyone's pieces were by the end of the weekend.
You can see that I was the rebel of the group, working in a landscape format instead of portrait and I chose to interpret an underwater theme rather than a garden. By this time we had added machine embroidery and I had cut back some of my sheer top layer as I wanted to see where I needed to add more stitch and maybe some more stamps. Just by coincidence, and probably because this venue was local to me, I had met 4 of the participants before, such is the small world of textile arts. It was fun to spend time with new people and to receive tuition from a lovely lady. I am going to do my best to finish my piece this week. Angie's piece is top left and was unfinished.
All of the work is beautiful and I loved seeing the way people combined the stencilled designs, stamps and colourways. You can see the fabulous and exotic flower forms and colours that were used. I hope I get to see some of the finished pieces some time.
You can see a short video of Angie's technique on Youtube and hear her beautiful singing voice.
We worked really hard over the weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. The other group with Mandy Pattullo worked equally hard, maybe even harder, and produced some fabulous work. We were invited to view their handiwork this afternoon.
Aren't these all fabulous? They must have worked very hard as this was all collaged tiny scraps of old clothing and was all worked by hand. If you know Mandy Pattullo's work you will recognise some of the creatures depicted. I particularly liked the fox (by Liz Hands, fancy her being there :-) ), the kingfisher and the blue hare.
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole weekend and it was wonderful to share this creative time with friendly people. Many thanks to Angie for all the information and techniques she shared with us and for making it a hardworking but relaxing and rewarding time. Thank you too to Nichola for all her hard work and her great sense of fun throughout the weekend. She worked really hard to ensure the hotel did everything to keep us happy and comfortable, not to mention well fed and watered. Keep your eye on Stitch Retreats, Nichola has not been trading long but she is working hard to provide satisfying stitchy breaks with excellent tutors.
